This month we are showcasing an NPS member who lives in Helena MT, Kathryn Fehlig. Kathryn designs our beautiful International Exhibit artwork Catalog. Many thanks for helping where you are able Kathryn!
Kathryn is a signature member of both the Pastel Society of America and the Northwest Pastel Society; a member of the Art Center of Helena and Mountain Sage Gallery; and a signature member of the International Society of Acrylic Painters
Showcase presented by Member Showcase Chair, Barbara Szkutnik
Web Design by Webmaster/NPS President James Geddes
Showcase presented by Member Showcase Chair, Barbara Szkutnik
Web Design by Webmaster/NPS President James Geddes
Prickly Pear Overcast
NPS:What is your first art-related memory?
Fehlig: My first art-related memory is designing/drawing clothes for my paper dolls before I was 10 years old. I wasn’t aware that I had much natural talent at that point, but I sure enjoyed the experience.
NPS: When did you first start using pastel? Is it the only medium you use? do specific mediums elicit specific subjects?
Fehlig: I first started using pastels in my teen years. My family and I had moved to the midwest and there were artists in my neighborhood. My mother signed me up for classes. They would set up a still-life and we would draw with pastel. I painted pastels and watercolors of my horse, dog and house in high school. I don’t remember using pastels at all from then until the early 70s, after I moved back to Montana, when I painted with a local group from the model and spent about 10 years painting horses and photographing at horse shows while showing my own horses throughout Montana. I bought a full set of Rembrandts and acquired some Grumbachers. I used Canson MiTientes exclusively at that time.
Pastel is only one of the many mediums I use or have used but I love to draw, and pastels satisfied that instinct more than anything else. Plus there were a lot of other artists using pastels to depict horses in my horse world—I kind of followed the crowd. For a long time I had never seen anyone use pastel for landscapes. When I discovered that and sanded paper, I never looked back. Pastels can be used for every style and subject matter of painting and drawing.
Heads Up!
NPS: If you use another medium, what brought you to that?
Fehlig: I have used most mediums in my life, oil paint when I was in college, but in the last few years I’ve been painting with acrylics. I missed using brushes and was getting impatient with the elaborate framing requirements of pastel.
Glimmer of Warth
NPS: There are a few abstract paintings on your website. Is that a recent move, and what brought you to paint the first one?
Fehlig: Yes—the abstracts: during my college years I was allowed to only paint abstract/contemporary style (it’s still that way at most universities and colleges). I took the opportunity to really study the elements of composition and design, especially color. My (large) oil abstracts attracted some attention and I had a couple of one-man shows. But when I moved to Montana, there was no market for them and I embarked on a new journey in landscape painting. Lately, however, I noticed that the relatively conservative pastel world was beginning to celebrate a more abstract approach. It was only natural that I returned to what I had started many years before. Abstracts still don’t sell well in Montana so they remain somewhat of an outlier for me.
Abstract 3
NPS: Do you consider yourself primarily a subject painter, or a concept painter when you begin an abstract?
Fehlig: I’m definitely not abstracting a subject, but just working with forms, rhythm, line, color, edges, etc. It’s kind of a journey to see what happens. Although I notice that I usually start with a “horizon” line either 1/3 down or 1/3 up.
NPS: What is your favorite subject and why? studio? photographs? plein-air?
Fehlig: I paint mostly landscapes—something I aspired to for a long time. I use my own photographs in the studio, painting from a computer monitor but occasionally painting plein air.
Russian Olive
NPS: What materials do you use? What's your favorite paper(s) and why?
Fehlig: I have collected various pastels and have examples of most of them in my palette. I have the full collection of Rembrandts and use them for my first layer. I have far more pastels then anyone in their right mind needs—I’m a bit of a hoarder. My favorite paper is Wallis Museum and I still posses some. But I’m experimenting with others and also making my own ground on gator board, and am kind of intrigued with PastelMat.
Shadow Brush
NPS: What's your favorite part of the painting process?
Fehlig: Finishing--the final flourishes that resolve the painting.
NPS: What do you think sets your work apart?
Fehlig: I’m good with color and painterly marks. My scenes are the Montana I know and love.
Winter Blues
NPS: Do you paint intuitively, or make studies first? Is your process the same with either abstract or more realistic works?
Fehlig: First I study the photograph(s) on the computer and arrange my cropping and canvas shapes with my representational work. I like to make at least a thumbnail or two to get the value patterns right. Photoshop is wonderful for changing color directions. With the abstracts I dig right in and see what happens.
NPS: Is there a particular piece that stands out as having changed your artistic direction? (we'd love to see that one!)
Fehlig: Yes, actually a whole experience. It was the first pastel I painted, in the first workshop I had ever taken, from Colleen Howe. I realized I could be good at this and painted one of the only plein air paintings that I didn’t have to finish in the studio. It was called “Tree Study—Nevada City.” I still strive for that simplicity and good composition.
Trees Nevada City
NPS: What, if anything, would you change about your studio?
Fehlig: I would love to have a nice big studio built just for me, not in the basement.
Basement Studio
NPS: How has your work changed over time? Has your thought process changed along with the work? How?
Fehlig: When I started painting seriously again in later life, I was striving for a point somewhere between my old abstract art and my new representational art. Still striving. Occasionally it happens.
NPS: Any advice for beginning artists? What would you do differently?
Fehlig: If you have talent and like to paint, don’t spend your life trying to please people that can’t be pleased. Paint, paint, paint!! And PAINT!!!!!!!
Kathy Fehlig NPS PSA
